When your artist statement feels like a vulnerable thing to share

Each time I review my bio and artist statement for a submission or exhibition, I have a little to and fro with myself about how much I want to share about myself. My art practice is a container for my own exploration, expression, maning-making, and healing. It’s inseparably linked to who I am and how I experience the world, including my experiences with – and responses to – loss, chronic illness, and disabilities. So every time I share my story, it feels like an incredibly vulnerable thing to share.

But preparing my bio and artist statement for my solo exhibition at St Antonius Hospital felt different. Any fears that popped up were overridden by the knowledge that many of the people who’d visit the exhibition would be people like me, living with chronic illnesses and disabilities (and people who love and support them), and an even bigger desire to offer connection, a mirror, belonging, and encouragement through my art.

My St Antonius Hospital Solo Exhibition

Here’s what I created to share at the exhibition. It’s in Dutch, so I’ve provided an English translation below.

English translation

About Cath Duncan

Cath’s mixed media paintings are inspired by her first career as a Grief Therapist and her personal experiences of loss. Nature is both her muse and sanctuary, offering sensory experiences and metaphors that shape her creative process and explore the relationships between inner and outer landscapes.

“I use mixed media because sensory experience is essential to me. After suddenly losing 80% of my vision and some of my hearing in 2013, I’ve come to cherish my senses more than ever. Through my art, I try to capture how landscapes feel—both physically and emotionally—using different mediums to convey their unique sensory qualities. For example, I might use transparent inks to depict the movement of light, water, wind, and skies, fine speckles of spray paint for delicate blossoms, and thick opaque paint to convey the weight and texture of rugged cliffs.

Focusing on my senses helps me notice and enjoy the small, beautiful things in life. It’s a mindful practice that calms me, grounds me in my body, and enhances my creative process. Ultimately, I hope my work inspires others to notice and savour the sensory experiences they enjoy and I love that my paintings can bring those wonderful feelings right into their home.”

Cath has exhibited her art in South Africa, the Netherlands, and the UK, and sold her original paintings to private collectors around the world. Cath works from her home studio in Utrecht.

Do artists need to be able to see well?

Not at all! Even iconic artists like Claude Monet and Edgar Degas created masterpieces despite significant vision impairments.

Visual observation is only a small part of creating art. We all have a multi-sensory system through which we experience the world. Touch, sound, taste, and smell are equally vital. Many artists also observe their body, thoughts, emotions, memories, and connections to life experiences and other people’s work in their creative process.

Artists use many skills to create their work, including technical skills such as drawing, brushwork, colour-mixing, and composition. Emotional intelligence and critical thinking also play key roles, helping artists tune into thoughts and feelings, reflect, interpret, make meaning, conceptualise, express themselves, tell stories, and imagine new ideas.
As for visual observation, how well the eyes work is only a small part of that skill. What we see is shaped by who we are: our thoughts, feelings, biases, past experiences, current knowledge, fears, values, and interests all influence what we notice and how we interpret and use it.

Finally, many styles of art don’t rely on realistic representation, are concerned with subjects that can’t be seen, or may not even involve a subject at all. Since the invention of photography, major art movements have focused on other priorities such as colour, imagination, expressiveness, experimentation, technique, abstraction, storytelling, activism, and more.